Didn't Want Him to Know
by fuckingbrianaman
Summary: James isn't as stupid as McGonagall thinks. He sees how Sirius looks at Remus, and by George, he is going to do something about it. Marauders Era. Sort-of campion to "A Quiet Mind". Warning: Slash obviously!


**Author's Note: In all technicalities, this is the prequel to my previous story, "A Quiet Mind". I originally wrote it as a second chapter, but in the end it was way too long so I decided to make it its own. It is officially decided that all of my Remus/Sirius fics are dedicated to a) notsoinnocentfangirl and b) my brother… even though he will probably never read these, but still. Anyways, this story explains some things I didn't think fit together in "Quiet" and it also follows that plot bunny that has been taunting me so. It may seem kind of jumpy or choppy, and if it does, I'm sorry. I wanted to cover everything I could without this turning into some nine thousand-word epic. I'm actually pretty pleased with the title, which is a big deal… for me… (Finding Nemo reference there) Behold! The final product! So… Enjoy!**

Didn't Want Him to Know

For James, it started about halfway through their second year.

That was the year the Marauders had discovered Remus's secret – that he was a werewolf. They had been trying for the past year to figure out why the hell he always disappeared and where the hell he went when he did and finally they succeeded. He could remember the entire conversation perfectly –

[Two boys tentatively approached a third who was sitting in a reclusive corner of the library. The first boy, Sirius, hesitated, earning him a swift elbow to the side from the second, James.

"No. We are going to talk to him about it. End of story, okay? Peter is keeping watch for Pince, we've rehearsed everything we're going to say – no backing out now," the Second had whispered. The First had made an odd noise in the back of his throat, this time earning him: "This is Remus Lupin we're talking about here. He's our mate. It doesn't matter what he is, it doesn't matter that he kept it a secret –" Another sound of strangulation could be heard here. "– because we figured it out, we'll make it work." Sirius nodded and took a deep breath. To James, he looked way more nervous than he should be. After all, it was only Remus and Sirius _was_ a Black, but he dismissed the notions and led the way.

"Pst! Rem!"

The closet werewolf jumped and spun around, glaring at them. "What is your problem? Some forewarning too good for you?" he whispered. He attempted to keep his voice angry, but affection dripped into it and colored it a warm orange. His eyebrows came together and he asked, "Where's Peter?"

"Keeping guard," Sirius replied, "in case Pince decides to break up the little chat we need to have."

"Chat about what?" the almost-blonde replied suspiciously.

"About your monthly excursions. No – stay right there, you aren't going anywhere – Sirius, restraining him isn't necessary, I'm sure he'll sit there and not run away if you stop pinning him to the chair. Now, Remy dearest, we have something to tell you."

The boy in question no longer had any color left in his face and looked as if he were about to cry, so Sirius quickly jumped in and tried to explain as fast as he possibly could.

"Mate, we know what's up. We aren't as stupid as McGonagall thinks we are; we've figured it out."

"Oh, really now? Somehow I don't believe you have. Because if you had you would be running away in terror and disgust."

"Just shut up, we know you're –" James paused, leaned forward, and lowered his voice to less than the whisper it already was, "a werewolf."

Remus's face went from white to green, so Sirius hastened to assure him that, "We don't care."

"Yeah. You won't be able to get rid of us that easily. Just because you have a – er – furry little problem doesn't mean that we don't still want to hang out with you and all that good rubbish."

"Are you guys serious?"

"I am, but that guy's James." The long haired boy received a good smack to the back of the head from "that guy".

Remus's face lit up and he visibly relaxed. "You mean it?"

"Of course we do, you daft fool," James said. "Why would we bother to explain all of this if we didn't?"]

That was the year that Sirius started acting weird. Every time Remus – or as they later dubbed him, Moony – was around he would giggle like a girl at the stupidest jokes and become overly touchy-feely with him. At first it wasn't even noticeable, it was so inconspicuous. But as time wore on, James's sixth sense started to badger him about it. After all, Sirius had never been that way with him (which James had to admit, he was quite grateful for) or Peter (now _that_ would have been weird). But he did nothing about it except quietly watch and try to piece together the puzzle for himself. Day in and day out he watched as his best mate would find excuses to touch the werewolf –

["Damn, Rem, you are bloody awful at ties. Just – no, stop fidgeting – let me get it."]

– or –

["Hell, it's cold out here! Lupin! Get your arse over here; you're sharing your cloak."]

Sometimes Sirius would just give out the strangest compliments to Remus that left both boys blushing for ages afterwards –

["Sirius," Moony began, "Do you think you could teach me how to juggle?"

"What good would _that_ do you?"

"Well I want to know how… just in case – you know – normal jobs don't work out for me. If I got good enough maybe I could – I don't know! – light some torches and juggle them. Like on a muggle street corner for money or somthi–"

"Trust me, Remus; there are much better ways _you_ could make money on a street corner than juggling."

Insert awkward cough here, add some blushing, and you get the idea.]

Little snippets of everyday life began to come together and make a recognizable, if not blurry, picture for James. If he didn't know any better he'd say Sirius _fancied_ Moony… But of course James Potter knew better.

The summer before their third year was celebrated at James's house. They spent most of the time looking up information on becoming Animagi, doing homework, and locking Remus in the basement (okay, so they only had to do that last one a few times, but it was still time consuming). Somewhere in the middle of all that they managed to hang out and just act like normal teenagers. James day-dreamt about Lily and acted like he didn't notice Sirius blushing, but he was silently forming a plan. His intuition was screaming at him that Black's feelings for the werewolf weren't as simple or platonic as he'd originally assumed, but James didn't want to jump to conclusions without consulting the boy in question.

He put it off, though, reasoning that if Sirius wanted him to know, he'd tell. But therein laid the problem: Sirius didn't want him to know. He knew anyways. He didn't know he knew – he thought he was just guessing, and he ignored his better judgment. Every day he watched as his two best friends (sorry, Peter) flirted and bickered and full on fought. Sometimes even _he_ blushed at the things they shouted at each other, but not once did he say anything.

Until about the November of their fourth year, that is –

[James took a deep breath and opened the door to the dorms. Sure enough, there was Sirius, and sure enough, there was the pile of projectiles he was hurtling at the wall, and sure enough, there was the string of profanities he was spitting at the four-poster.

"Sirius," James tired.

"Don't you 'Sirius' me, you sonofabitch. You don't have to deal with him! Every time something goes wrong it's my fault! Why am I never bloody GOOD ENOUGH to just bloody BE?!" He punctuated his words by throwing an innocent vase and an unsuspecting box of chocolates at the wall.

"Sirius," James said, this time more firmly, "we need to talk."

"What about?" he said as he dropped to his bed and started punching his pillow as if it had done him a personal wrong and insulted his mother. _Well maybe not his mother_, James thought. _He'd just join in if it were insulting her. More like his hair…_

"You. Er, you and… Remus."

Sirius stopped and looked at his best mate with the eyes of a child confronted about his bed wetting problem. "What about me and Remus?"

_Remus and I_, said a voice in James's head that sounded oddly like Remus himself, but James ignored it and pressed on. "Look, see the way you look at him. I'm not as stupid as McGonagall thinks I am," he said, proud he managed to tie in that particular reference. "I see how you flirt with him – damn it, Sirius, stay put! _Colloportus_! No, don't – _expelliarmus_! Now will you listen to me? I see how you flirt with him and I see how your face falls whenever he doesn't return it. I see how you touch him, how you revolve around him, how you hold your breath whenever he laughs. I'm not stupid. I know the signs. Sirius, you have to tell him."

"Tell him what, exactly?"

James groaned. He should've known it wouldn't be that easy. "Don't make me say it, please! This conversation's awkward enough."

"Well you've made it this far, just please explain what the hell you're talking about."

"You!" _Never mind. Just forget I said anything. Go back to living in denial and I'll continue pretending that I'm not watching my best mate get his heart broken._ "You and – you and Remus! I said that already. I mean, you – erg! You won't make this easy, will you?" James sighed. "Sirius. You have to have realized it by now. You're gay. And you're in love with Moony."

Sirius buried his face in his pillow and mumbled something incoherent.

"What?"

"I said 'I know.' As in, I know I'm gay. As in, I know I'm in love with him. As in, I know you aren't stupid and I have to tell him and this is all horribly awkward and I hate it."

"Er, good. I'm glad we're on the same page. I think. That actually went a bit faster than I thought it would."

More mumbles from the pillow.

"What?"

"I said 'that's what she said.'"]

For a few months they had left it at that, but Sirius kept putting off his confession and James was starting to get annoyed. It wasn't like it was with him and Lily: the two boys were friends. Better than friends. Best friends. Sirius may not have been as close to Remus as he was with James, but still. They knew each other's deepest secrets and faults, yet still accepted one another. A few weeks after they came back from winter break, James decided to give Sirius a little reminder of how, exactly, he felt –

["_Colloportus_," James whispered, pointing his wand at the door.

"That can't be good," Sirius said, his head snapping up from the magazine he was reading as he lounged on his bed. "Nope, not good at all. Empty dorm except for you and me, plus a locking charm? I'm screwed."

"Calm down; I just want to talk."

"That's what you always say. No, I take that back. 'Lily, will you go out with me?' is what you always say."

"Hey! I wholeheartedly disagree! What I always say is "Sirius, get your arse in gear and tell Remus how you feel, already.'"

"Oh, not this again," Sirius said, tossing the magazine aside completely.

"_Yes_ this again. You won't do it on your own, so I figured you needed a little reminder."

"Reminder of what, exactly? Of how you're a total prick who can't seem to keep his nose in his own bloody love life? Oh, that's right! I forgot! You don't _have _a bloody love life!"

"Merlin, Sirius, just shut the hell up. Can we make a deal? A nice, temporary deal?"

"Do I have a choice? A nice, temporary choice?"

"No, not really," James said with a smirk. "See, I'm going to ask you questions, and you're going to answer them. Truthfully. And you're only going to talk when I ask you a question. Got it? Good. Now. Question number one: When did you realize you were in love with him?"

"What kind of question is that?!"

"Just answer it."

"But what does it have to do with anything?"

"You'll see eventually, if you'd just answer!"

"Fine, keep your trousers on. Hm… I guess… I guess I realized I loved him that day we went to The Three Broomsticks –"

"Wonderfully elaborate, there, mate. I just narrowed it down to about fifty different days. Could you be more specific?"

"I was about to! But you interrupted me!"

"Well get on with it then!"

"Fine! As I was saying, I realized last year, sometime during the winter, when we went to The Three Broomsticks. It was the day we had ordered our first full crate of dungbombs from Zonko's, remember? Anyways, we were all sitting down, enjoying our butterbeer… Come to think of it, Peter didn't go to Hogsmead any that year, did he? No, I remember. His dad wouldn't sign the rudy form until this year… Anyways, you had gone off to the loo and I got up to go get us all some more butterbeers. I remember, I looked back and saw him sitting there all by himself, looking so completely alone… I think my heart kind of broke then, seeing him all alone like that. I hated it. I thought to myself, 'Self, Remus doesn't deserve to be alone.' And I replied to myself, 'Oh and you're going to do something about that?' I didn't have an answer for me at that point so I just kept quiet.

"Then this bird walked up and started flirting with him and I swear to God, James, if I hadn't been trying to balance three butterbeers in my hands I would have cursed her into next week. I was so pissed at her and I didn't even know who the hell she was… 'That isn't normal' I told myself. And I realized that none of my feelings for Moons were normal." Sirius paused, looking down at his hands. "Is that a specific enough answer for you?"

"No way. You were in love with him way before then. I noticed it a few weeks after we told him we knew his secret. You were constantly flirting with him and finding these stupid reasons to touch him and… It started way before last winter."

Sirius continued to look at his hands as if waiting for a response to be given to him by his fingers. He sighed. "Is that a question? Am I allowed to speak?"

"Yeah, I guess."

Another sigh. "Okay, I guess… I guess I… I fell in love with him that night we told him… That look on his face… And do you remember what he said when we said we had figured it out? He said, 'Somehow I don't believe you have. Because if you had you would be running away in terror and disgust.' God, that hit me. Hard. I felt like… I don't know…! Like I wanted to take it all for him. Like it wasn't fair that he had to put up with that. I wanted to hit him for thinking I would ever run away from him."

James just stared at Sirius, who was still trying to tell his own fortune through palm reading.

He – James – cleared his throat. "Okay, question two: how do you feel when you look at him?"

"What is the point of this?"

"I'll explain after you answer all of my questions, okay?" James said, starting to get annoyed. Sirius never let anything be easy.

"There had better be a point. And a damn good one, too."

"There is."

Deep breath. "When I look at him I feel like… My chest just kind of…" Sirius rubbed his forehead, something he did when he couldn't quite think of what to say. "It isn't easy to explain. I guess you'd know what I'm talking about, but it still… Words don't do it justice. When I look at Remy, my heart sort of expands and fills my entire chest. It's like… Like there is too much air in my lungs and I'm floating or something. Every time I'm around him I feel like _this is how it should be_. Like, forever. Me and him. Him and I, I mean. Like if I tried to live without him… I'd sink, I guess."

"Question three: when you touch him – or better yet, when he touches you – how do you feel?"

Another pause, and James thought they seemed to be the motif of the entire conversation. "This is going to sound really cliché," Sirius said slowly, "but I feel… Whole, I guess? Like touching him is what I'm supposed to do. And whenever he touches me I get kind of… excited? I get my hopes up and think that maybe he feels the sparks I feel, that maybe he gets those shivers too. I feel like there isn't enough contact though. Like I want to touch him everywhere and feel him touching me –"

"Whoa, there, too much info!"

Sirius shrugged, grinning slightly. "You asked."

"Alright, last question. What's stopping you? What's keeping you from telling him?"

"Damn it, James –"

"Answer it."

"I don't tell him because I don't want him to know! He deals with enough as it is; he doesn't need to put up with his best mate being gay for him, okay? He's straight. Horribly straight. Wonderfully straight. I keep it to myself because it's my own sick way of helping him. If I don't let him know, he doesn't have to face it, and I carry the burden. I don't want him to know."

"But you just said that you want him with you forever."

"Shut up, James. Just shut the hell up."

There was a knock at the door and Peter's voice floated through; "James, could you please unlock this frigging door? I really need to pee."]

James had hoped that Sirius would grow a pair and tell Remus already, but he didn't. James tried to corner him again and again to talk him into it, maybe formulate a plan, but every time he got close, Black managed to slip away. The game of cat and mouse continued and escalated and eventually even Peter began to notice. It got to the point where James just wanted to bash his head against a wall from frustration.

It wasn't until almost the end of their fifth year when James finally knocked some sense into Sirius. He caught him one day after they had been flying and told him what he – Sirius – was going to do. No more choices –

["There's only one more full moon left. We're all going to be in the Shrieking Shack. You're going to wake up early and tell him how you feel. I can't guarantee that I'll stay asleep, but I'll try. Peter usually sleeps the latest out of all of us, so you won't have to worry about that. Just keep your voice at a whisper, okay? And whatever happens, don't start shouting at him."

"Sure, fine, dandy. What the hell are you on about?!"

James was fed up. He grabbed Sirius's robes and slammed him into the nearest wall, then growled, "You didn't want him to know, that was fine, but enough is enough. You're going to stop being such a wuss and you're going to tell Remus how you feel. There aren't any more options; there aren't any more second chances. You aren't going to wait for the perfect moment; you are going to make it. I'm sick of sitting on the side and watching you fall to pieces every time someone else makes a move on him. I'm sick of you not listening to me when I say to bloody go for it. So next Thursday morning, you are going to actually do something about it. Got it?"

Sirius nodded meekly. James let him down.]

The week passed by with an aching slowness that was driving James insane. He feared Sirius would get cold feet and back out, but if he did, James would just have to beat him to a pulp. The moon rose and they all transformed and James and Sirius pretended that everything was normal. Whenever Prongs or Wormtail would get too close, Padfoot would shoo them away, just like normal. The dog curled up next to his wolf and fell asleep, just like normal. In the morning –

[James woke up the next morning and saw, to his amazement, the very two boys he had been rooting for snogging on the floor of the Shack. Well, it wasn't really snogging, it was far more gentle than that. Sirius had his hands in Remus's hair and was barely pressing his lips to the other boy's, but it heated up fast. James watched in surprised silence as Remus not only returned the kiss, but deepened it and took full control.

_Hm_, James thought to himself, _never would have guessed that Moony would play top…_ _I really shouldn't interrupt them… But poor Peter has no idea… No, it'd be best to stop it now and ease Pettigrew into the idea. _

"'Bout damn time," James said as he sat up and stretched. The two boys jumped about a mile out of their skins and Remus looked like you could fry an egg on his face.

James couldn't help but notice, even as he laughed, that Sirius was beaming and holding tight to Moony's hand, and Moony was doing nothing to shake him off.]

The Marauders hadn't really discussed anything about _them_ that morning, and Sirius had never filled James in on the details, but he didn't really care.

After all, it was Sirius's secret. So what if he didn't want him to know?


End file.
